The Adventures of Captain Ray Penson

I am in Saudi Arabia for a short job, inspecting a couple of ships. Its quite warm and everything is covered in sand, not really my type of place but I should be able to top up the boat fund and carry on preparing for next summer.

Anyway, I went offshore yesterday and got marooned on a ship overnight. With not much to do I started flicking back on the laptop through old photos. I was surprised to see that I was in Pelican, Alaska on this date – TWO years ago!

Main Street Pelican. Photo Ray Penson. Sailing Yacht Truce

Pelican was an interesting place, the sort of place not many people get to as it’s off the beaten track. I remember interesting and friendly people, a library with good WiFi, fresh salmon and good beer. Very enjoyable.

Fresh Salmon. Photo Ray Penson. Sailing Yacht Truce

Flicking forward in time to one year ago I found a photo of the underside of the mast where it exits the coach roof, with bits of wood smashed up to make makeshift mast wedges. At the time I was on my way from San Francisco to Hawaii, it was a bit disconcerting when some mast wedges dropped out and creaks started emanating from the mast. I think the change of climate may have caused the wooden wedges to shrink a bit as we headed south. I was happy to have fixed the problem and arrived in Hawaii where I made a more permanent fix once in port.

Makeshift Mast Wedge. Sailing Yacht Truce.

This year I find myself offshore Saudi Arabia. I haven’t been in these waters since I was a young man working on a pioneering SBM project to service the super-tankers of the day. We managed to achieve amazing things with very little equipment – maybe because we didn’t understand we could fail. There are far more platforms, barges, rigs and workboats around than the old days – it’s a very busy place now.